Small Groups are more about personal growth than good feelings. Groups always experience plateaus in building relationships and faith. Here is a guide to help group leaders identify plateaus, and break through them for greater personal and spiritual growth.

There are five good reasons why the cross remains important today. If you are looking for a sermon series in Lent, here they are: 

#1: The cross proves that God can do the impossible. Read the story of Lazarus (John 11). 

Dead is dead. Scrooge knew that about Marley. Mary Shelley underlined that in the story of Frankenstein. We can run, but we can't hide from the truth. The Gospels go to great lengths to say Jesus really died ... complete with all the gore and sadness. God does the impossible by resurrecting life. Not just a ghost. Not just a dream or emotion. The Gospel goes to great lengths to say Jesus lived again ... complete with wounds and a healthy appetite. The story of Lazarus demonstrates God's ability to do the impossible also, and not just for the Son, but for all of us adopted children. 

#2: The cross proves that God really knows how bad life can get. Read Isaiah 42:1-4 and 53:1-5. 

God's empathy is not abstract. God doesn't sympathize from a distance. He completely identified...

Much has been made of the supposed "relativism" and "scepticism" of post-modern people. Isn't it interesting, then, that in both pop culture and serious conversation, the supernatural, God-talk, and a general yearning for absolute truth is bubbling up everywhere. 

Many ask how to start, pursue, and find fulfillment in a spiritual discipline. I reply that the real challenge is to dare, endure, and ultimately find courage to live a spiritual life. The outcome of a spiritual quest is not some form of contented serenity, but the courage keep on living and the hope that motivates personal risk. A true quest is not about dabbling in spiritualities, but risking life and lifestyle on paradoxical hope. It is living in the boundary between the illogical and the reasonable; between the inevitable and the surprising; and between the shameful and the acceptable. 

This blog thread generally follows the coaching in my book GPS: Global Positioning for the Soul. You can find it at: http://www.amazon.com/GPS-Thomas-G-Bandy/dp/0986903019/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325961564&sr=8-1-fkmr2  

There are two major false starts for anyone ready to embark on a spiritual quest.  

Never start with God! Comparing religions, studying theology, speculating about the supernatural and even debating about the existence of God is unproductive. It may satisfy our curiosity (for a time), but it will lead no further than scepticism and wishful thinking. Why? It is because the intellectual exercise creates a critical distance between subject and object ... between your ego and your heart's desire ... and the very pride inherent in "me" thinking about "God" prevents "God" from embracing "me". It is as if a teenager falls in love with being in love, imagining that that is what love is really like, and feeling in complete control of the experience. Real love is to surrender all control to the beloved in an experience that is awesome and terrifying at the same time. 

Never start with your personal problems! Many people are precipitated into spirituality by some personal crisis, illness, disaster, or issue. Their goal is to find health and happiness. Spirituality is really just another form of therapy. It may help someone return to normalcy. The spiritual life, however, is more abnormal than normal. Lead a spiritual life, and you are more likely to be considered a fanatic, intellectually unreliable, or just plain foolish. A spiritual quest is pursued at the risk of health and in anticipation of periods of unhappiness. Like marriage, a spiritual quest is "for better, for worse; for richer, or poorer; in sickness and in health". Unlike marriage, the reunion of lover and beloved does not necessarily end in death. 

Perhaps the best book in the Bible with which to start a spiritual quest is The Song of Solomon. 

The best place to start a spiritual quest is by confronting the six fundamental, universal, existential anxieties of life. These six anxieties color and shape every moment of our living: you, me, every human being. 

·         The anxieties of emptiness and meaninglessness;

·         The anxieties of fate and death;

·         The anxieties of guilt and condemnation; 

These chronic anxieties are like a stage on which all the dramas of living are played out; or a hidden software platform which runs all the programs and "Aps" we can ever customize into the diversity of cultures, experiences, and personalities of time. 

There is much to say about each anxiety. My point is that a true spiritual quest begins by confronting them. Face them. Stop denying them, running from them, or even trying to "cure" them. They are bigger than you are. You will never be able to reason your way around them, rationalize them into inconsequence, or escape their clutches. At different times, in different relationships, and different circumstances, different anxieties may dominate your life. Yet they are always there. It is these existential anxieties which simultaneously make us human ... and separate us from the goal of our quest. Before you can get where you want to go, you have to acknowledge where you are.

The contest of wills over who determines the future of the Protestant Church is heating up. What is at stake is not one theological direction or another, but the very relevance and sustainability of the Protestant Church. The Roman Catholic (and Orthodox) churches have a future; and the Pentecostal churches have a future; but the Protestant movement is in serious trouble. 

We have to look beneath the rhetoric of "tradition" and "innovation" to even begin to understand the stakes. "Tradition" today simply refers to whatever comfort zones are embraced by the people in control. "Innovation" today simply refers to whatever agendas are endorsed by people who are trying to gain control. Everyone tries to legitimize their positions claiming to represent a supposed theological tradition (reformed, evangelical, or whatever), but it is rarely defensible. Scratch beneath the service, and even the casual seeker discovers that local church people have no real idea why one church differs from another ... except that,...

Once again I have had cause to marvel that churches rely so completely on volunteers ... and yet don't seem to know how to multiply and care for them. Other non-profit organizations (social service, hospitals, etc.) have all mastered the art of empowering volunteers. The church only seems to know how to use them like disposable tissues. One sneeze (i.e. committee or program), and throw them away! Back in the old Christendom days, the church might have gotten away with that, because there were always more where they came from. Not today. 

First of all, churches need to understand the three biggest reasons why potential volunteers do not choose the church. They may go to the United Way, or the Salvation Army, or the Cancer Society ... but they avoid churches like the plague. 

#1: Volunteers abhor waste.

Churches spend way too much money on overhead (sacred property, old technology, useless programs, and boring worship). Volunteers wonder why they are working so hard to help an organization that is so unproductive. 

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In answer to many direct and indirect questions from weary church leaders: Yes, it is harder to grow the church in 2012 than it was in the 1990's. (I am speaking about the western, "First World" church of North America, western Europe, Australia, etc.)  

It is harder to plant a church, renew a church, and sustain a church long term today than just a decade ago. Despite the boastful stats on church planting, conversions, etc. the church in general continues to lose its share of the "spiritual marketplace" to alternative spiritualities, popular superstitions, other religions, and the secular faith in absolute scepticism.  

When any organization is in decline, it normally becomes more experimental and daring, outward focused, and conversational. Ironically, it is the reverse with the North American church. The church has actually become less daring, more inward focused, and confrontational and defensive since the 1990's. Why? 

Here's my top 10 list: Why the church is harder to grow in 2012: 

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                 In my writing I have always emphasized the four keys to credibility as a means for evaluation (of oneself or of other leaders): mission attitude, high integrity, skills/competencies, and teamwork. (See http://www.amazon.ca/Why-Should-I-Believe-You and http://www.missioninsite.com/book/accelerate.html.)  

                Modern people immediately leap to evaluate skills and competencies. Continuous learning is a good thing, provided that we correctly determine what, exactly and honestly, we are trying to be successful at achieving.

Moderns are not very good at that, and since in this world of blur, flux, and speed we are all incompetent most of the time, that kind of self-evaluation only gets you so far.  

                Postmodern people tend to be fixated on teamwork. Cooperation,...

Every December I anticipate more time to myself to read and write ... and every year I am disappointed. Catching up on email, invoices, webinars, website development, etc. takes a surprising amount of time, and then there is all the Christmas activity. Yet I think the greatest blessing is that cessation of travel allows me time to read more widely and reflect about the intersection of religion and culture.

I wonder what your perspective is on attitudes toward the future in this New Year. I`ve been reading commentary from various American and European sources regarding the European economic issues. Canada is somewhat more insulated from volatile markets, but it will eventually follow the USA ... and the future is a bit bleak there. The US predictably is suffering from international instability, the huge war debt, and the legacy of de-regulation on corporations from the last two decades. Unfortunately, that anxiety is greatly increased by extraordinary political polarization. One has to go back over a century...

Every week I discover more and more people with a "desire to discern" God's re-purposing of their lives. Strategic planners now talk about "re-purposing" old properties (using old technologies for new purposes). And God is clearly re-purposing willing Christians. We know this ... but are not clear how to discern that purpose. 

Two groups of people seem especially earnest about discerning God's purpose in their lives. The first group are clergy who are closing in on retirement; frustrated with the church; or dissatisfied with their leadership role in the church. The second group are spiritually alive 20- to 30- "somethings" who want to follow Jesus in mission, but don't want to amass a huge debt in seminary, sidetrack themselves wrestling with the bureaucratic church, or waste time with dogmatic quibbles.

  

 I...

Every ten years or so, it seems that God leads me into a significant change of life and mission: small group leader, pastor, scholar, church transformer, church planter, consultant, author, and so on.